24 November 2013 8:46 AM

Our Chief Industry is the Manufacture of Lying Statistics

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column

Any reader of this column is usually several years ahead of the crowd. Here, we grasped from the start that the Blair creature was a menace; that the Iraq and Afghan wars were wrong; that joining the Euro would be a terrible mistake; that the Tories are both useless and doomed.

We already know that the return of grammar schools – once derided, now increasingly demanded – is the key to education reform.

But perhaps above all we understand that all important government statistics are fiddled, and that the crime figures are so violently massaged that they bear no relation to reality at all.

Yet fashionable opinion has until recently denied this truth, accusing doubters of ‘moral panic’. Lofty commentators and social scientists have proclaimed a new era of social peace and order.

When normal people, living in the real Britain, complain that this does not seem to be true where they live, they are sneered at as if they were deluded.

But last week, we learned the truth. At an astonishing hearing of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, experts and former police officers lined up to reveal the myriad methods by which the police make crime and disorder disappear from the figures.

At the heart of the trick is this simple aim – to pretend that large numbers of incidents which would once have been crimes, are now reclassified so that they don’t appear in the official returns as such. In short, crime has ‘fallen’ because we have now redefined millions of crimes as non-crimes.

You may still be attacked or robbed. But it doesn’t count. And this barely touches on another issue, which I plan to deal with shortly, of the vast amount of Internet crime which goes entirely unpunished and unrecorded.

The MPs were plainly astonished (for as usual they have not been paying attention). It was clear that the police are under heavy political pressure, from all major parties, to deliver lower crime figures.

This is one of two things our country is good at. Our most successful and fastest-growing branch of agriculture is cannabis farming. Our most successful industry is the manufacture of lying statistics, showing that everything is fine.

Meanwhile, half the containers leaving British ports are empty, because we make so little and the world does not want it. How long can this go on? Official figures will not be a good guide.

******

There’s only one problem with the plan for the Tories to re-name themselves the ‘National Liberal Party’. It’s that they’re not in fact ‘National’ in any way.

They slavishly do the bidding of the EU (while pretending to be against it). So they actively help to dismantle and dissolve our nation. And at the same time they are more or less dead in the North and in Scotland, where most people would rather Tandoori and eat their own grannies than vote Tory.

So why not just call themselves ‘Liberals’, and merge with the Liberal Democrats, whom they currently claim to hate and despise but who are, in fact, their friends and allies in the wrecking of this country?

And then the honoured name of ‘Conservative’ , might be freed from the Tory taint, and be adopted by a new party that actually does want to conserve our civilisation.

*******

The Disasters Emergency Committee is a fine and necessary body, because it has one simple job – to ensure our charitable donations go to those who need them, without middlemen or delay.

So it was dreadfully wrong for them to assert that climate change may have been to blame for the Philippines Typhoon.

This is not a fact, but a highly contentious opinion which many charitable people don’t share. It is a misuse of the DEC’s position. If they keep doing it, I fear they will make donors suspicious and less willing to give.

Charities have grown too close to government and are far too infested by political lobbyists, using the public goodwill to promote their causes. In the long term, this will undermine all charity. I hope the Charities Commission rebukes the DEC for this.

****

I never wanted to have any Human Rights. But surely the planned revival of Monty Python violates every single one of them?

*****

Here’s why so many cyclists are being crushed to death on our roads. Many car, van and lorry drivers actively hate them. This is partly because of Jeremy Clarkson, who spread the dangerous falsehood that cyclists don’t pay any tax towards roads, and made ‘jokes’ about running them down for fun.

But it is mainly because car owners, forced to crawl along our congested roads, are furious that their shiny toys don’t zoom about as they do in the TV commercials. And the sight of cyclists, moving with comparative freedom, fills them with frustrated rage.

Once, you might have said I was imagining this. But we have proof in the Tweet posted by Emma Way (fined this week for her offence) ‘Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way – he doesn’t even pay road tax.’

Her victim, as it happens, survived without serious injury, though that’s no credit to Ms Way. Many enraged motorists feel and drive the same way but have more sense than to say so openly. Jeremy Clarkson should use his BBC stardom to make a full retraction. If he does, he may spare many from injury or even death. If he doesn’t, well, you work it out.

Meanwhile, to the other drivers, who treat cyclists with courtesy and intelligence, my profound thanks. And to the stupid cyclists who ride through red lights, or seek an early death by wearing headphones while riding, stop giving the rest of us a bad name.

*************

How can we expect to stay free if we don’t pay more attention?

An allegedly coke-snorting Methodist Minister and bank chief is a good story. But this week has seen two frightening developments which have attracted far too little attention:

There are serious plans to bring political commissars, by the dozen, into Whitehall, destroying the civil service neutrality which has helped keep us free and relatively uncorrupt for more than a century.

And, perhaps even worse, the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to try two alleged terrorists in secret. The Prosecutors want to exclude press and public from the court, conceal the identities of the defendants and even ban reporting some of the charges. Why not make the accused wear Iron Masks while they’re about it? Let us hope this sinister plea is thrown out.

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Paul P - I'm not entirely sure what your point is, or at least how it relates to cycling in Cambridge. Doubtless there is a pearl of wisdom in there somewhere, but it seems to be eluding me at the moment.

"Why would a student choose not to cycle in Oxford or Cambridge? .....etc etc.)

Yes of course. Of course of course. You had me fooled for a moment Mr Wooderson. Thank you for putting me straight. I'll have my neighbour remove (Oxon) from his card on the grounds that you would never see (Man) or (Liv). I expect he'll be grateful for the heads-up.

Alan Thomas, Joshua Wooderson - am I right in sensing a tentative consensus of sorts ? Wow, if so it's got to be a first!

RE Cambridge, I feel I have to disagree that 'it's best suited to cyclists'. It is actually best suited to pedestrians (the group which seem to be most threatened by cyclists in the city centre Isle) - cars actually don't seem to be all that present in the centre where all the colleges etc are and motoring takes place largely in the colossal ring road which circles the city.

Interesting facts RE Canada etc, but I suppose the obvious factor relating to risk here would be the significantly fewer number of cyclists in these areas compared to motorists and how culpability was measured.

Paul P – to have attended Oxbridge still affords one a certain prestige, of course, but I doubt cycling is the first thing that comes to most people's minds when those venerable institutions are mentioned.

Your theory makes little sense, in any case. Why would a student choose not to cycle in Oxford or Cambridge? Why would anyone forego a little more time in bed in the mornings so as to trudge to lectures on foot? Or, as I suppose is the alternative, choose the expense of operating a car (which, as I say, is often impractical, if not impossible, given the nature of many colleges)?

William – 'is it possible to draw any general conclusions from this or is Westminster a particular hotbed of pathological motorists?'

Quite possibly, but if so I imagine it would be a hotbed of pathological cyclists as well. Certainly my own experiences of cycling in central London suggest as much. I don't know whether statistics exist for the country as a whole, but apparently an analysis of collisions in Toronto found much the same ('cyclists are the cause of less than 10 per cent of bike-car accidents'), and Canadians are reputed to be fairly level-headed people.

Unsurprisingly, the data from Canada also show that provinces that invest most in cycling infrastructure have both higher rates of cycling and significantly lower rates of cycling fatalities. So while better behaviour from cyclists wouldn't go amiss, a road system that was not so manifestly designed to the advantage of motorists would be better still.

As someone whose father served it the RAF during WW2 , I found the Monty Python 'don't come back;' RAF sketch not just unfunny but seriously offensive. I 'm sure many others felt the same.

I didn't think much of the Monty Python show. Too much of its humour involved sneering at Britain and the British in similar ways. No doubt there were aspects of Britain that deserved caricature, but the country did not deserve the relentless denigration of it by people like the Python crew and the 'That as The Week That Was' show. People who on the whole weren't fit to shine the shoes of those they mocked.

This denigration slotted in very nicely with Marxist Critical Theory which is not doubt why it went down a storm at the BBC.

I trust that those who sniggered at this sort of arrested -adolescent thing are happy with the morality-free, standardless third word slum they and their kind have succeeded in reducing our country to.

"....and perhaps since the Blairite expansion of higher education to the great unwashed....."

Quite probably. In Richard Hillary's autobiographical account of his wartime RAF career, The Last Enemy, he speaks of the point later in the air war when "they let in the grammar school boys". It went downhill from then on. 'We simply didn't speak the same language', Hillary lamented wistfully. Thus did a 'golden age' of mess life pass into history, to be replaced with the guttural age of the emancipated classes.

Recent reports from the deans of today's undergrads not being able to understand the application forms or put together grammatical sentences, or even speak coherently, supports your comment above. At last we agree on something.

"Besides which, one would struggle to maintain much of a feeling of superiority riding a bike given that even the plebs ride them here."

If I were to conduct a survey of post-grads and asked them to comment on the value of their university education, the number saying "When I was at Oxford" would far exceed the number saying "When I was at Bristol/Leeds/Manchester/Durham" and so forth. Need I proffer you yet another 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink' vis-à-vis "a cut above everyone else"?

"I know, it can be hard to accept something that doesn't conform to your prejudices...."

Quite. Not that I'm arguing for a solution of 'last in, first out', but making things easier for the motorists would almost certainly result in the obvious outcome: more cars, or traffic flowing faster in a city that is far more suited to bikes. Of course, the riding of bikes in a less stupid manner would certainly be welcome, particularly by the thousands of residents who cycle to work.

Alan Thomas, Joshua Wooderson - just a quick response as it's too late for much else and I haven't read anything which has substantially changed my view.

The important thing is not traffic as such but the proportion of cyclists - of course Huntingdon has less traffic and is smaller, but the point is surely about the ratio of cyclists to others, not global traffic per se.

Alan Thomas - whilst I appreciate the reminiscences (honest! ), I think it is important in these instances to try to be as objective as we possibly can be, so if I may temporarily pull your attention away from your lyrical waxing of personal fantasies ...

"But what a marvellous invention for a medieval city"

Perhaps, but I would wager not for one jam-packed with students, boffins, tourists, globe-trotters and assorted hangers-on . Too crowded now, and there is the small point that the motor car has intruded also.

Joshua Wooderson - thank you, I am indeed interested, I've always time for statistics. However, is it possible to draw any general conclusions from this or is Westminster a particular hotbed of pathological motorists?

This looks to me like what Freud might have called 'projection'. I don't doubt that there are people in Cambridge who think like your teenage self, but, in my (admittedly limited) experience – and perhaps since the Blairite expansion of higher education to the great unwashed – that mentality is not all that prevalent.

Besides which, one would struggle to maintain much of a feeling of superiority riding a bike given that even the plebs ride them here.

'I don't entirely accept your dissembling over the Cambridge bikes.'

I know, it can be hard to accept something that doesn't conform to your prejudices, but you should give it a try, old chap.

Well I admit that I was a university student quite a long time ago in the days when university studentship was relatively rare and worn proudly on the sleeve - actually around the neck. I rode a motorbike in those days and made sure my scarf flailed very visibly behind for all to see. It embarrasses me now but we all thought we were a substantial cut above everyone else - all other mere mortals that is. What on earth was the point of being a cut above everyone else and them not knowing it?

I don't entirely accept your dissembling over the Cambridge bikes. I'll just proffer you a 'nudge-nudge; wink-wink', and leave it at that.

William - re. cyclists and culpability for accidents, you may find this interesting:

'The City of Westminster Council found that drivers were to blame for 68 per cent of collisions between cyclists and motor vehicles in the borough in the past 12 months. It found that cyclists were at fault for only 20 per cent. In the remaining 12 per cent of cases, no cause could be found or both parties were to blame.

The research also revealed that there were 133 collisions between cyclists and pedestrians in the past three years. Of these, 60 per cent were caused by the pedestrian, while 40 per cent were caused by the cyclist.

About 28 per cent of these incidents were caused by pedestrians failing to look properly, and only 8 per cent were caused by cyclists ignoring traffic lights.'

Yes, I was aware of the Cromwell connection, and that of dear old rascal Sam Pepys...

But back to bikes and Cambridge - a University city without a campus, unless you have noticed one on your visits - whose colleges can be some two miles apart, and, as you say, never designed for bikes. But what a marvellous invention for a medieval city. For both students and the thousands of folk who worked in the many colleges, for not a lot of money, I seem to remember.
And for all those many other thousands who work in the central area, where, a few years back, all-day parking would set one back £15 a day. Incidentally, I lived some 5 miles out of town when I bought my first home and, together with many others, pedalled to work in all weathers. Bikes were the transport of most workers for many generations, the students were just, in terms of the foreign girls, passing visions
from a different world...

Can't disagree regarding crime stats, but interesting comments from Mr Hitchens re cycling. That's because his defensive comments on the subject are at odds with his more general stance towards rules, boundaries and enforcement.

Of course, there's a critical nod towards errant cyclists at the end, but otherwise Mr H's perspective seems to echo what he would castigate with regards to other groups and law and order, and the arguments these others use to justify their lawbreaking.

For example, there's the sense of blame-shifting and victimhood, and more specifically that because there's always someone else further up the pecking order in terms of road users' status and potential danger then that excuses wrongdoing. (I'm also alluding to Mr H's input to the comments section as well.)

Of course, the problem is that others do likewise. For example, an oft-heard cry from motorists is 'what about the real criminals?' when brought to book for anything except the most serious of driving crimes.

The bottom line is that while there's self-evidently copious evidence of driver misbehaviour, the majority of cyclists that I see don't even adhere to the fundamentals, such as keeping on the roads rather than the pavement, using lights at night and NOT driving up one-way streets. The vast majority of drivers DO adhere to such rules.

And while drivers are generally not 'caught out' with regard to minor offences, cyclists are effectively NEVER brought to book. A couple of years my local force recorded eight cycling offences or thereabouts, which at a low level at least is consistent with Mr H's claims about official stats grossly underrepresenting crime.

But this surely helps explain the increased resentment of many towards cyclists as a group, and also perhaps explains - if not excuses - the more naked aggression towards cyclists that can result in tragedy.

The bottom line is that if we're all selective as regards the rules and laws that we adhere to, and the authorities take a similar approach, then that leads to the situation more generally that Mr H normally, rightly and compellingly outlines with regard to society more generally.

I have it on good authority (The BBC news ) stop laughing everyone.
That a certain Chinese lady whose name I forget .Has become a £ billionaire filling containers here with waste , here in Blighty . and shipping them back to China. Very enterprising .
We buy mostly cr*p from them .She makes a fortune returning the wrappings. So soon to be the new rulers I feel, if only they knew, it don't work like that never has..

Alan Thomas - I appreciate the allusion to pre-war children's literature but you have to admit it is going back quite a bit and I'm not entirely sure of it's relevance. I am as serious about my opinions as you Sir - or given your usual form perhaps I should say more so? I suggest the reverse might be more appropriate - 'Just Alan' - but we really must return to the present .

Not content with incoherence, it seems you now wish to get involved in inconsistency and contradiction as well. You originally wrote :

"I would suggest there are more residents regularly on two wheels than students. "

This kinda invalidates your student theory. In any case, it isn't entirely clear why students should require bicycles more than the rest of the population, especially seeing as most of them live virtually on top of all the things you identified (hence the term 'campus') and, again, you don't seem to get it with the student populations of other cities. I believe there was always an element of affectation involved, and you've said nothing to convince me otherwise.

" All this taking place in an ancient city, never designed for motor cars."

No, it is medieval - it wasn't designed for bicycles either. Neither was Huntingdon (it was the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell).

To return to the question (something I know you aren't overly fond of) of culpability for the high rate of fatality among cyclists, I would argue that in my opinion it is cyclists themselves who are probably more responsible, if my experience of them in areas where they have a heavy presence is anything to go by. Yes, quite a few motorists are idiots but it is difficult for even the most experienced, responsible driver to brake in time if a barely visible cyclist suddenly pulls out. A parked car is not so much a safety risk as an inconvenience.

But the real problem is congestion caused by overpopulation and the concentration of jobs/opportunities and therefore population density in certain urban areas. As a society, we are giving little thought to quality of life for the average person.

Your closing jibe about foreign students is a typically unworthy remark - all I would say on this is that your anti-patriotism has reached such almost fetishistic levels that you are incapable of considering any issue without some crass reference to "BNPism", or something similar.

If you really want to know, I think it would be better if we shrank the HE industry to just elite institutions for the genuinely able, focused resources on training British graduates in Britain - we didn't need an influx of 'global talent' when we were collecting Nobel prizes by the cartload - and rebuilt our export base rather than this model of selling ourselves out to foreign investment/capital and equipping fee-paying foreign students with the skills to eventually out-compete us. We are constantly informed that we're part of "the global village" - problem is, nobody seems to know but us , or rather our managers ...

William – Cambridge University has about twenty thousand students, Anglia Ruskin around thirty thousand, of whom I would say, fairly conservatively, ninety percent own a bicycle. (Many of them remain in Cambridge for a few years after graduation, as well, and, being impecunious graduates, I suspect often choose not to buy a car).

The town itself has a population of around 120,000, so at least forty percent of residents – during term, at least – will be cyclists, given the student population alone. That may account for the difference between Cambridge and Huntingdon.

As for why students cycle, aside from the expense of operating a car and the convenience of cycling in Cambridge, most colleges (at least at Cambridge University, I don't know the system at Anglia Ruskin) either provide little parking or forbid students to own a car altogether.

Incidentally, if your concern is to preserve our heritage, I would have thought you would be keen to encourage cycling, and conversely to discourage driving, as much as possible.

Paul P – 'In Cambridge cycling among the student population is the 'done thing'. It is a rite of passage, like the wearing of scarves and the affecting of bohemian-chic at any university.'

With respect, I think you're making this up as you go along. Perhaps I associate with the wrong people, but I know hardly anyone who could be said to affect 'bohemian-chic' (or who regularly wears a university scarf, for that matter) and yet almost everyone I've met in Cambridge rides a bike. No doubt it is 'the done thing', but probably because Cambridge is well-suited to cycling, and ill-suited to modern forms of transport, for the reasons Alan Thomas gives.

Huntingdon, a small town I've often visited, suffers far less from traffic - of all types - due to being much smaller and far less congested than Cambridge. It does not attract many thousands of students, travelling from college to lecture rooms, home to college, college to sports halls/grounds, home to girlfriend's flat ... I'm sure you get the picture. All this taking place in an ancient city, never designed for motor cars, at all times of the day, evenings and night.
Hence your comparison to Huntingdon was rather a nonsense.

My mention of parked cars in streets marked with cycle paths has been an issue in Cambridge for many years. Experience drivers make allowances for cyclists pulling out of such lanes in order to proceed - the more 'get-out-of-my-way driver' often hoots and raises a finger, something, I'm sure, you are not guilty offer.

And, finally, as one who often sets out his mind in respect of 'foreigners' on this site, I can't help wondering if you would include all those overseas language students who wobble around the city on bikes on your list of those you wish to send packing...

Yes, Human Rights are said to inhere in Human Beings simply because they are human. This though raises the question ; Why?

The Human Rights idea is an invention originating in Kant (John Locke as a claim) in an effort to expel religion from ethics. Unfortunately for this attempt, the idea that humans have inherent worth is not universal, simply because it is a function of Western Christian Civilisation. Christianity says that human beings have value because they are equally loved children of God. Kant and Locke each anchored their ethical systems in religion. (The stoics thought that we all had a 'divine spark'.)
.
The danger of Human Rights is that, contrary to Common Law which is a ground -up system controlled (at least to a certain extent) by precedent and formally anyway by the electorate through statute law, Human Rights are a broad-brush, top-down system controlled by judges, who can interpret them more or less as they please.. They are open-ended and it is inevitable that they are pushed as they have been to encompass the minutiae of our daily lives, overriding democracy in the process..

If you want to know how such systems work out in practice, there is no better book than 'Slouching Towards Gomorrah' by the American Robert H Bork. Bork was put forward as a Supreme Court Judge but was so violently smeared and denigrated in the US senate hearing that a new word was coined ; to 'Bork'.

This occurred because his position was that the US constitution should be interpreted according to the intentions of those who drafted it. This did not suit the leftists-liberals in the Senate who preferred the Constitution to be interpreted according to their agenda.

As Bork says in te Chapter 6 of his book which is headed 'The Supreme Court as an Agent of Liberalism',

'It is arguable that the American Judiciary -The Supreme Court abetted by the lower Federal Courts and many state courts - is the single most powerful force shaping our culture.;....ln its cultural - political role, the Court almost invariably advances the agenda of modern liberalism. . (in no small measure)..it advances the spread of both radical individualism and radical egalitarianism.

This is a philosophy or mood that cannot be derived from the Constitution. It is approved however by the intellectual class (to which judges belong)..

It is instructive that in the United Kingdom, the primary proponents of adopting a written constitution and the power of judicial review of legislation are the Labor Party and intellectuals.

The correspondents alluding to containers leaving British ports filled with waste don't know the half of it! Several years ago, as a detective investigating a domestic murder, I was tasked with searching for a knife and bloody clothing. A witness had told us that she had seen the suspect put something in his green bin which had been collected by the green bin collection in the morning. Armed with this vital intel, my team headed for the local tip. The tip manager showed us to the area where he said the waste of the day in question had been deposited. He offered us the services of his digger and driver. In my naivety, I asked him where the green waste was. He then sighed, took me privately to his office. He then gave me a thousand yard stare, another deep sigh and said. "Officer, it all goes in the same hole. Nobody can afford a recycling plant so it all gets buried here" . He then extracted a promise to keep this schtum, which until now, I have. Never did find the knife to the clothing though.....

I insist on having the last word on bike riding. I have thought of it as a chore since I was 17 - many years ago. But motorised transport is a curse, motorways are permanent scars across our green and pleasant land. I prefer a train except for short journeys, then 'Shanks Pony' is best.

But there are traffic problems in Holmes Chapel hence the May 2013 Re-routing Options paper. I'd be wary about my safety along the London Road.

I do think you are right about the pretentions of some cyclists - there is definitely a element of perceived moral superiority in choosing bicycling as a transport mode. Discretionary transport mode choice is akin to the changed social acceptability of smoking and drink driving for example.

Alan Thomas - with respect, your points are even less coherent than usual, which is surely an achievement of sorts ?

" Population is related to congestion in general "

I think you'll find its t'other way around Alan. I'll leave you to draw the obvious conclusion.

" and the use of a bike has been extremely common in Cambridge for several decades, so I can hardly imagine it is down to 'fashion' as you suggest. "

Wrong again - firstly, there is such a thing as a 'classic ' trend, ie one which endures (men's suits for example). Second, there may well have been a practical reason for the prevalence of cycling in the past - in Cambridge and elsewhere - before the age of motoring, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't become more of a fashion for some people today.

Esp RE Cambridge, where cycling may have served a quite different, utilitarian purpose before mass media dominance and the image of 'the eccentric cycling don' had become fixed in the popular imagination, and global tourism had turned the city into a glorified version of Disneyland ("Come pay your money folks see the fancy college / ride your bike / pretend to be Harry Potter etc etc)

And, as usual, you demonstrate considerable skill in evasion - Huntingdon is only 20 mins or so West of Cambridge, equally flat/ fen-like, and cycling is far less prevalent there. How do you account for this?

In contrast to your implication Alan, I think it is important to respect and preserve our heritage, which is precisely why I think tourism often cheapens it, in addition to adding to the overall congestion in a place like Cambridge.

As I said, I'm not against cyclists but, unlike motorists, there is no requirement to acquire road-safety awareness and, again as I said, many seem to give the impression that they believe any responsibility for this lies with the motorist. Given the overall level of congestion, the complete disregard which many Cambridge cyclists seem to show towards 'road courtesy' (towards pedestrians as well as motorists), let alone 'rules' of the highway, is increasing the risk. Taking responsibility here is the key.

Perhaps the most muddled part of your post was your view that a large stationary vehicle is more of a danger than one which is barely visible and weaving in and out of traffic. Pray tell, how do you arrive at that conclusion?

I suspect such cyclists are in the minority in Cambridge. From what I remember they are more likely to resemble those sit-up-and-beg bikes often seen in foreign parts, with nice big baskets (just right for bringing home the fish supper) and so often ridden by those lovely young ladies with flaxen hair and fair complexions...

Oh...the very thought raises the question of why there are not far more accidents in that city of my youth.

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